The Wainhouse Research Bulletin
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The Wainhouse Research Bulletin ONLINE NEWS AND VIEWS ON VISUAL COLLABORATION AND RICH MEDIA Please feel free to forward this newsletter to your colleagues. To be added to our automated email distribution list, simply visit http://www.wainhouse.com/bulletin. SUBSCRIBE NOW! IT’S FREE! Andrew W. Davis, [email protected]. Welcome to 2001 and Volume 2 pay a purchase price of $7 million in cash and 1 million Genesis shares, which are trading for about Happy New Year Everyone. This is issue #1 of $42.50/share as this newsletter is being written – so volume 2 of the Wainhouse Research Bulletin! The the purchase price is about $50 million. team here is looking forward to reporting to you all While PlaceWare, Evoke, and WebEx are more well the multimedia conferencing and collaboration news known in the web conferencing arena, Astound has and views in the coming year. Since we began our been quietly building a solid product/service in the newsletter on July 24, 2000, we’ve published 23 market, and has closed several service provider issues and we’re very pleased with the feedback accounts, including Vialog and Genesys. Several we’ve been getting and with the rising tide of months ago, when Genesys selected Astound it also subscribers. Please encourage your colleagues to invested about $5 million in the Canadian company. sign up for their own subscriptions. Despite the message in the header above, we are averaging about Here’s What I Think two phone calls per week asking us how much the subscription costs (it’s free!) and three emails a This acquisition positions Genesys well to provide a week asking us how to sign up (go to comprehensive range of audio, video, and web wainhouse.com). It’s simple. And now… on with conferencing services to its customers and to control the news…….. its own technology and destiny. I believe the Astound technology is first rate, and the team there WRB Subscriber List has done a great job catering to some major 4000 customers. 3500 3000 I also believe the future of audio conferencing is 2500 web conferencing and if you look at the revenue 2000 models today, users are accustomed to paying per minute for audio calls, but generally think that web 1500 conferencing should be free, like this newsletter and 1000 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1011121314151617181920212223 everything else on the Internet! So, I question the WRB Issue Number long-term viability of stand-alone web conferencing companies; most of them will have to run for cover, Genesys Conferencing Acquires Astound and the best strategic fit is with an audio conferencing company. With this deal, Astound Just when we thought it was safe to sit back with our instantly picks up a large worldwide sales force. eggnog and relax for the Christmas break, Genesys Nice move. announced the acquisition of Canada’s Astound. Astound has 82 employees and sales of just over $2 [email protected] million in its most recent fiscal year. Genesys will The Wainhouse Research Bulletin Page-1 Vol. 2 #1, January 3, 2001 InView Jumps on IP Conferencing So, while SAVVIS is providing the network, InView will be providing the conferencing services. One For those of you who have been waiting for a important part of those services is the web-based conferencing service provider to jump on the IP reservation/management scheme, and for that, bandwagon, you should take a good look at InView. InView has selected Orchestra Software from InView is about to offer its customers a Collaborative Systems, a software developer who comprehensive IP solution for a variety of has done a lot of work for Bell South. According to conferencing services based on several services the the product claims, Orchestra allows users to company is about to roll out. schedule and control their audio and video conferences, regardless of the brand of hardware in Perhaps the most important building block in the the network. Orchestra handles scheduling, billing, InView arsenal is an agreement with SAVVIS in reporting, trouble ticketing, device control, and which InView will provide conferencing traffic management as well as automated H.320 and applications to customers on the SAVVIS network. H.323 call launching and will be bundled into the SAVVIS, a publicly traded company with a heritage overall InView suite of services. The “hardware- in ISP operations and managed data networking agnostic” claim by Collaborative Systems is a bit services, operates an IP-over-ATM network that hard to swallow, given today’s state of the market. reaches over 117 cities in 51 countries through 151 I’m not saying it isn’t true, I’m saying that recent POPs and 128 ATM and 147 frame relay switches. trends from FVC.COM, 1414c, and Polycom/ You can think of the SAVVIS network as a giant Accord would say the technology isn’t ready for cloud providing quality of service for customers “hardware-agnostic.” (subscribers) through a stable of POPs and private network access points (NAPs) where the SAVVIS The third element of the InView strategy is based on network connects to UUNET, Sprint, and incorporating VX-Centrex hardware from Ridgeway Cable&Wireless networks. Between SAVVIS and Systems. Ridgeway’s VX system is a brilliant the others, you can probably get to all your corporate product that suffers because it doesn’t fall cleanly colleagues and more than half of your inter- into any predefined product definition or category, company colleagues without touching the public and because it is an infrastructure or service provider Internet with IP voice/video traffic. product that has no enterprise counterpart. The VX is a multimedia applications platform + H.323 Without going into all the techno-babble about gatekeeper + switch + proxy server + NAT solution layers, switches, routers, and DS1 to OC12 for address management. The bottom line is that the bandwidth, suffice to say that SAVVIS is providing VX sits at the carrier site, not the enterprise site, and four quality levels or service agreement levels, provides the intelligence for managing, connecting, where latency guarantees range from 50 ms to 75 ms and manipulating H.323 media streams. Because it and packet losses range from less than 0.1% to 1%. sits at the carrier level, its functionality and services These latency figures are below the human detection are available only to subscribers. The good news is level, so that IP voice and video on the SAVVIS that subscribers don’t have to reconfigure their network should be as natural as circuit-switched networks or firewalls. All H.323 traffic passes voice and ISDN video. through well known Ridgeway ports. I believe this is the way IP voice and video Concluding Thoughts conferencing is going to roll out – through a series of private IP clouds (Enron, Level 3, SAVVIS, InView is putting together the major elements Qwest and a host of others, including those required to migrate multimedia conferencing to mentioned above) and then ultimately through H.323 and ultimately to the corporate mainstream – peering points that connect these clouds. Someday, broadband networks with quality of service; web- but not anytime soon, quality of service will also be based management and control systems; and available on the Internet. infrastructure components for security, firewall compatibility, and reliable inter-enterprise (but same service provider) communications. These three The Wainhouse Research Bulletin Page-2 Vol. 2 #1, January 3, 2001 announcements rolled up into one event are exciting customers and not be just another pretty press news indeed. The new service will be sold by about release. 200 sales people in SAVVIS, 15 in InView, and another 200 at InView’s sister company Intercall. V-SPAN's experience in the H.320 world and the company’s focus on delivering next-generation IP When you look at the developments spurred by services put V-SPAN in a great position for the IP FVC.COM + Qwest; Global Video Com + PSInet; future and for gateway services to legacy systems. WireOne + Exodus; V-SPAN, and 1414c, we should And having the Sony sales team/reseller network start to see some very reasonable clouds of IP promoting the V-SPAN service is nice. conferencing deployed in 2001. It’s now or never for the industry. Deals like this have to make you wonder if we’re heading for the cell phone model. Sign up for XX [email protected] (brooke ysteboe) months of service and get the hardware for free! Sony partners with V-SPAN for IP Sony, meanwhile, has also announced a relationship Conferencing with Broadwing that is more centered on cooperative marketing, in this case Sony video- Sony has announced a partnership with V-SPAN to conferencing systems and Broadwing IP services. provide end-to-end videoconferencing solutions for customers of its set-top system, the Contact. [email protected] (Josh Cartagenova) Contact supports both H.323 and H.320. The video V-SPAN Rolls Out IP Services and audio conferencing network services from V-SPAN will include bridging, network provision- Literally as we were going to press, we learned that ing, gateway connection, managed services, V-SPAN is about to announce two related new scheduling and reservations, and help desk for both services. OnNet IP Conferencing is a complete ISDN-based and IP-based equipment. Additional videoconferencing-over-IP service that includes V-SPAN services include web-based scheduling, bridging and gateway services for V-SPAN network consulting, and event management, as well customers. In conjunction with this announcement, as product training. These services will be marketed V-SPAN is enhancing its Meeting Center web portal and sold by Sony and its reseller network.